Tag: Charlie Lee

Charlie Lee, the creator of Litecoin, spoke about the recent events surrounding Coinbase, in the seventeenth episode of Magical Crypto Friends.

Charlie Lee, the creator of Litecoin, spoke about the recent events surrounding Coinbase, in the seventeenth episode of Magical Crypto Friends. The podcast also included Riccardo Spagni aka Fluffypony, Samson Mow, and WhalePanda, the rest three members of Magical Crypto Friends.

Coinbase, one of the biggest exchanges in the U.S., has been in the headlines since the announcement of XRP listing, however, the negative news outweighed the positive ones. The negative fame started with rumors over insider trading, which broke out days after the platform listed the third-largest cryptocurrency by market cap. This gained momentum with the acquisition of a blockchain analytics firm, Neutrino, as it was revealed that the firm had an association with Hacking Team. This report led to the start of the #DeleteCoinbase movement.

Furthermore, the Director of Institutional Sales, Christine Sandler, stated that they were aware of the Neutrino-HackingTeam association, in an interview with Cheddar. To make things worse, she stated that they acquired the blockchain analytics firm because their “current clients were selling client data to outside sources”.

The controversy surrounding Coinbase-Hacking Team was soon addressed by Brian Armstrong, the CEO of Coinbase. In a blog post, he stated that the firm decided to let go of all the members previously associated with Hacking Team.

Charlie Lee said on #DeleteCoinbase,

“I thought like people have been deleting Coinbase for a while now right. I guess this Neutrino thing really brought this back out and people are like more upset about Coinbase and actually going out and deleting their accounts. But, you know, from my point of view, people who actually delete Coinbase, don’t actually use it anyways, right. So, its not really going to affect anything.”

This was followed with Riccardo Spagni, the lead maintainer of Monero, speaking about the topic. He said:

“I don’t think that the people that are deleting Coinbase are going to have more than a very minimal impact on the bottom line. […] I do think that there would be a trickle-down effect from the people that are deleting Coinbase […] So it is atleast going to provide a slow shift away from Coinbase as a first point of Contact for people wanting to get into Bitcoin.”

Litecoin, the early Bitcoin spin-off that appeared on the market back in October 2011, holds fourth place on the CoinMarketCap (CMC) list of the biggest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization. The coin’s price is currently sitting at $56.42, and it seems very likely that it will catch up with its older brother sometime soon. In this article, U.Today is brushing the dust off its crystal ball to determine what is holding up for Litecoin in one or five years.

The top altcoin

The biggest challenge for Litecoin is to prove why investors should ditch Bitcoin, the crypto trailblazer, for one of its later versions. The cryptocurrency emerged as Bitcoin-Lite, which essentially explains the name of the coin. Litecoin does have plenty of similarities with its older brother, but it offers 2.5 times faster transactions and more efficient storage. However, it wasn’t enough to convince some naysayers who would call LTC an ‘incomprehensible Bitcoin clone’ as early as in 2011.

Litecoin has always been there alongside Bitcoin. For instance, LTC was the second biggest cryptocurrency as of April 28, 2013, with a market capitalization of 74.6 mln. On Sep. 28, 2014, Ripple’s XRP replaced LTC at second place. On January 21, 2016, Ethereum (ETH), the brainchild of Vitalik Buterin, eventually trumped Litecoin out of the top 3. As of March 9, 2018, it occupies fourth place with a market capitalization of 3.4 bln.

Breaking out of Bitcoin’s shadow

As of late, Litecoin is placing more emphasis on privacy in an attempt to become an anonymous version of Bitcoin that would rival the likes of Monero and Zcash. Litecoin founder Charlie Lee earlier himself revealed that the network would add Confidential Transactions as early as in 2019. If that happens, one should expect a significant price increase.

On top of that, it is also worth mentioning about Litecoin’s recent collaboration with BEAM, a brand-new privacy coin that is powered by the MimbleWimble protocol, made the coin’s price skyrocket 30 percent.

If Litecoin continues to move in that direction, its price will continue increasing throughout 2019 and 2020.

The drop in mining rewards

Just like Bitcoin, Litecoin is a Proof-of-Work (PoW) currency, and mining rewards are the bread and butter of cryptocurrency miners. The upcoming block reward reduction will have a significant impact on its price. Miners will not be selling the same amount of LTC, which will drastically reduce the supply of the coin. If the demands remain at the same level, the supply reduction will make the LTC price skyrocket.

Moon Overlord, a popular cryptocurrency analyst, earlier suggested that Litecoin bottomed out 200 days before its halving in 2015 and reached its current ATH of $375. The Litecoin halving is expected to occur in August 2019. The mining reward will go from 25 LTC to 12.5 LTC. Since history tends to repeat itself, it is reasonable to expect a brand-new ATH in 2021.

However, one shouldn’t forget that Bitcoin is still the king, and Litecoin will most likely fail to experience any significant price bumps if the whole cryptocurrency market remains in the doldrums.

Restoring reputation and increasing adoption

Charlie Lee had headlines around the globe after selling off all of his Litecoin holdings at the peak of the bull market. The fact that the founder of the project got rid of all his coins was far from the best thing that could happen to Litecoin’s reputation. However, Lee later claimed that his decision to jump ship was motivated by solely good intentions – he wanted to express his opinion about the state of the cryptocurrency market without being accused of manipulation. Very few people bought the excuse with some even suggesting that the mammoth-sized sell-off was an inside job.

Lee didn’t abandon the project after all. As reported earlier by U.Today, he is currently focusing on streamlining the merchant adoption of Litecoin. For that purpose, he teamed up with HTC, which introduced LTC support for its first Blockchain smartphone, ‘EXODUS 1.’

If there is a huge growth in the number of users, the Litecoin price will grow exponentially in the nearest future.

2025 price prediction

When it comes to long-term price predictions, not a single expert could give a definitive answer. The coin’s future depends on multiple factors:

The pace of Litecoin adoption (if LTC fails to break into the mainstream, there is a very little chance that its price will shoot through the roof).

The team and management (infighting is never good for any project, and Litecoin has to avoid any conflicts and disagreements within the team).

The state of the cryptocurrency market (altcoins greatly depend on the price of Bitcoin, and the growing institutional interest could give LTC a huge boost).

Cryptocurrency regulations around the globe (if regulators crack down on Bitcoin, it will drag down altcoins as well).

It is worth mentioning that a lot of folks in the cryptocurrency space see Litecoin (LTC) as the best option for long-term investment given that this digital asset can serve as a store of value. Bitcoin is often called digital gold while Litecoin is digital silver. No matter how many new coins appear in the crypto space, Bitcoin and Litecoin are the two O.G. currencies with already established brands that are probably not going anywhere.

The bottom line

Yes, there are many factors that could push the price of Litecoin up (privacy-oriented feature, halving, increased adoption, etc.). Unless top altcoins stop tracking Bitcoin, it is highly likely that LTC will follow the cryptocurrency market. However, there are currently many exciting developments in the space, and the upcoming ‘Facebook Coin’ could be a complete game-changer.

Can Litecoin hit $100, $1,000, or $10,000 by 2025? Over the past few years, cryptocurrency enthusiasts have learned that there is nothing impossible, but one thing is certain – no one can predict for sure how much Litecoin is going to cost in 2025. Hypothetically, if Litecoin follows the growth model of Facebook, it could reach $961, but, of course, there are very little similarities between these two projects.

In many ways, Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Litecoin (LTC) represent the Cane and Abel of cryptocurrencies.

Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin, being the father of crypto, birthed two sons: Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash. Ever since their inception, both cryptocurrencies have seen it as their destiny to claim the role of prodigal son and achieve Nakamoto’s true vision of a “Peer to peer electronic Cash system.”

In the following, BTCManager takes a closer look at the history of both cryptocurrencies to explore how this sibling rivalry emerged and has evolved over the years.

History of Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash

According to Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin was initially developed to be a medium of exchange between anonymous users on the Internet. Over time, however, this vision became distorted as the cryptocurrency’s inability to scale, yet profitable market returns led people to believe it should instead function as a store of value or digital gold.

As the store of value interpretation of Bitcoin became more mainstream, many purists felt that the community was losing sight of Bitcoin’s potential to provide financial autonomy for people all over the world as a peer to peer cash system.

Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash were subsequently born in the absence of a genuinely decentralized peer-to-peer cash system. Each cryptocurrency aimed to solve the scalability challenges that were making it impossible for Bitcoin to fulfill its destiny as a medium of exchange. Among those scalability challenges was an increase in transaction fees and block validation times. These issues continued to hamper people’s ability to transact BTC and became a source of divisiveness amongst the developer community, eventually leading to two forks that created Litecoin and later Bitcoin Cash.

Litecoin was created on October 7, 2011, by Charlie Lee, a former Google employee and Engineering Director at Coinbase. Its main features are the ability to process a block every 2.5 minutes (instead of ten minutes on the Bitcoin blockchain) and the use of Scrypt hashing algorithm used in place of SHA-256.

Bitcoin Cash was created several years later on August 1, 2017. While Litecoin emerged out of relatively smooth circumstances (a simple forking of the Bitcoin blockchain to create a new currency), Bitcoin Cash’s hard fork was much more divisive and controversial.

In early 2017, members of the Bitcoin community began to push for increasing the block size to store more memory and handle more transactions. This group (led by the passionate and highly-opinionated Roger Ver) felt that the community’s resistance to increasing the block size was an expression of favoritism towards the digital store of value narrative rather than as a currency.

The disagreement led to the pro-currency group of developers and entrepreneurs creating a hard fork and establishing Bitcoin Cash. BCH increased their block size to 8 MB, while Bitcoin remained at 2 MB. This increase supposedly allows BCH to handle up to 61 transactions per second compared to Bitcoins seven per second.

BCH Hard Fork (SV and ABC)

In almost the same controversial manner in which BCH split from Bitcoin, on November 15, 2018, the BCH community experienced their hard fork, leading to the creation of BCHABC (ABC for Adjustable Blocksize Cap) and BCHSV (SV for Satoshi’s Vision). Unsurprisingly, the dispute between these two groups was over the topic of block sizes.

In July 2018, Bitcoin ABC developer Amaury Sechet proposed an idea called Pre-consensus, which described a method for determining block size before the block arrived. The benefits would include providing a significantly stronger zero-confirmation guarantee compared to the one BCH has at the moment, plus allowing the network to scale better. Both Roger Ver and Jihan Wu of the mining company Bitmain supported this idea.

Craig Wright, the chief scientist of NChain (and self-proclaimed Satoshi Nakamoto), was not in support of this idea and decided to create BCH SV with the goal of restoring “the original Satoshi protocol” by overwriting the network scripts of Bitcoin ABC and increasing the block size of BCH from 32MB to128MB.

BitcoinCash (ABC) vs. Litecoin: Fundamentals

The stories of how Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash emerged are fascinating, but if one wants to understand how these two cryptocurrencies compare, it’s imperative to dig deeper into their fundamental architecture and utility in the market.

Here’s a chart of how BCH stacked up against LTC back when they first forked:

Functionality and Use Case

As offspring’s of the Bitcoin blockchain, Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin share some similar features to the pioneer cryptocurrency, such as their use of the Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus mechanism. However, there are more differences in their underlying architecture. For example, Litecoin uses segregated witness (SegWit), which is a process that increases the amount of space on a block by removing the signature data from transactions.

The additional space created from the removal of the signatures allows for more transactions to be processed per block. Through SegWit, Litecoin was able to increase its block size from 1 MB to 4 MB. By contrast, Bitcoin Cash initially split from Bitcoin to increase their block size to 8 MB and has since increased it to 32 MB.

When it comes to use cases, Bitcoin cash seems to have the upper hand, having developed more applications on its blockchain and also integrated with more decentralized services to spread the utility of its currency. Some of the apps developed on Bitcoin Cash’s platform include Memo Cash, a decentralized social media app like Twitter, Blockpress, a social media platform, and Centbee, a wallet that integrates users phone contacts.

Litecoin, by comparison, doesn’t have as many applications. However, they do have Lite.IM, which allows users to send funds to each other via SMS without an Internet connection. Currently, this app competes with Bitcoin Cash’s CoinText and may end up achieving higher adoption due to its integration with Telegram, one of the largest messaging platforms in the world.

Bigger Isn’t Always Better

The most obvious benefit to having a bigger block size is that a blockchain network can support more transactions within the same timeframe.

If increasing the block size is the best answer to the scalability problem, then why doesn’t every blockchain do it? Well, the simple reason is that bigger blocks are not always better. In some ways, increasing the block size may be insufficient for achieving scalability.

For one, an increase in block size can put extra costs on users due to an increase in bandwidth, which may prove too much for people with slow Internet connections living in underdeveloped countries to handle. By increasing the disk space requirements needed to mine BCH, the network forces people to continue buying larger drives to accommodate the space. This requirement results in fewer miners being able to participate, which could ultimately lead to centralization.

Furthermore, data from Bitcoin cash’s transaction volume shows that there isn’t enough transaction volume on the BitcoinCash network to make use of all that extra space provided by the increased block size.

Despite being capable of managing 5,760,000 transactions per day, the Bitcoin cash network has only seen 9,695 transactions in the past 24 hours, which is just 0.16 percent of the transaction volume the network can support. By contrast, Litecoin has seen 21,411 transactions in the past 24 hours, which means it is making far more use of its block space than BCH.

These are some of the main reasons why Bitcoin chose to focus on layer 2 scaling solutions like Lightning Network, which Litecoin has primarily concentrated on adopting in place of increasing block sizes.

Transaction Volume and Speed

Both coins are meant to serve as mediums of exchange, meaning that it should be easier to buy a cup of coffee with Litecoin or Bitcoin Cash than with Bitcoin. To find out which of the two coins is cheaper and faster to purchase a cup of coffee, BTCManager looks into each coin’s transaction volume, speed, and affiliated costs.

When it comes to block processing speed, Litecoin has the upper hand with its ability to process a new block every 2.5 minutes, while BCH still takes ten minutes per block.

This has an impact on transaction volumes, for which Litecoin’s volume over the past 30 days is $39,703,524,041, and Bitcoin Cash’s 30-day volume is just $9,270,619,602. A ranking of the average transaction speeds shows that Bitcoin Cash takes about 60 minutes to process a transaction, while Litecoin takes only 30 minutes.

It’s not all bad news for BCH though. When looking at average transaction fees, it is Bitcoin Cash that provides a cheaper transaction at just $0.0043 compared to Litecoin’s $0.021. This is even more surprising when you consider the average transaction value, which for BCH is $29,011 and for Litecoin is only $3,545.

We can see from the chart that for most of 2017 and 2018 it was Litecoin’s transaction fees that were cheaper. Only until November 2018 (around the time of the BCH hard fork that created BCHABC and BCHSV) did the BCH networks transaction fees start getting less expensive than Litecoin’s.

Overall, LiteCoin tends to be more favorable for making smaller purchases (like a cup of coffee), but buyers end up saving more money when transacting larger volumes with BCH, especially as those cups of coffee start to pile up.

Mining Profitability

Litecoin uses the Scrypt hashing algorithm, while Bitcoin Cash uses SHA-256. These algorithms are applied to the hardware used to mining these cryptocurrencies.

The SHA-256 algorithm creates hashes representing the data held in blocks on the blockchain. SHA-256 requires a higher hash rate, and due to the algorithms increased complexity it tends to be more accurate and secure than Scrypt, but also slower. This is why it takes ten minutes to generate new blocks on the Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash blockchain.

Scrypt, by comparison, is a much simpler hashing algorithm that requires a lower hashrate than SHA-256, which is why the Litecoin block time is only 2.5 minutes. It is, however, more memory intensive, and the shorter block time can lead to an increased number of blocks, which makes data storage expensive.

Public Perception

When it comes to public perception, both of these cryptocurrencies could not be more different.

While the Litecoin community has worked quietly over the years to carve its lane, the Bitcoin Cash community has been very vocal in its attempts to brand itself as the “true” Bitcoin. This move has unsurprisingly led to many clashes with the Bitcoin community and created tribalism in the broader crypto space.

While some see BCH as a legitimate cryptocurrency forged out of a fundamental disagreement over whether Bitcoin should be a store of value or medium of exchange, others see it as nothing more than an attempt to exploit the name of Bitcoin to maximize profits, especially at the height of the crypto bull market in 2017.

Among those who have publicly criticized BCH is none other than Litecoin founder Charlie Lee. In 2018 Charlie called out Roger Ver for his attempts to brand Bitcoin Cash as the new Bitcoin, using Bitcoin.com as the BCH home website and calling Bitcoin “Bitcoin Core.”

Roger @rogerkver, please stop calling Bitcoin, Bitcoin Core. No one else does this. Both https://t.co/VKB9ZGgQk8 website and mobile wallet are misleading new users with this bullshit. And it is especially hypocritical coming from you seeing how upset you are with the name bcash. https://t.co/ufjJDqDW1W

This isn’t the only time that the leaders of BCH and LTC have publicly criticized each other, though most of the battle between these two cryptocurrencies tends to be fought through their development work and efforts to achieve market dominance.

The Saga Continues

The sibling rivalry between Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash is fascinating because it can be interpreted from a functionality perspective, as well as from a mission statement perspective.

Litecoin’s ethos has always been to become the best version of Litecoin, never directly competing with Bitcoin. On the other hand, BitcoinCash’s mission has been to replace Bitcoin core and become “Bitcoin” in its purest sense.

These differing approaches seem to affect the way each community tackles the problem of scalability. While Litecoin sees layer 2 scaling solutions as a more forward-thinking approach, BCH chooses the more conventional route of larger block sizes to stay as true to the original Bitcoin white paper as possible.

From a usability standpoint, Litecoin is built to handle everyday transactions at a faster speed than Bitcoin Cash. However, Bitcoin Cash seems to have the upper hand as transactions get larger due to its large block size, which makes it possible to process greater transaction volumes for less cost.

It’s too early to tell which strategy will be most effective in achieving widespread adoption. Yet regardless of how well one cryptocurrency outperforms the other over the coming years, at 1.68 percent and 1.78 percent market dominance, it’s safe to say that both Litecoin and BitcoinCash still have an uphill battle to climb before they can stand toe to toe with Bitcoin and achieve Satoshi’s vision of a peer-to-peer electronic cash system.

It is interesting that the Tron (TRX) token, and Litecoin (LTC) are exploring the use of privacy. At the moment, both coins are set to launch into the world …

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Confidentiality of transactions and identity is what every crypto investor will love to see on favorite coins. It is interesting that the Tron (TRX) token, and Litecoin (LTC) are exploring the use of privacy. At the moment, both coins are set to launch into the world of privacy. The move will no doubt, enhance their chances in the crypto market.

Tron (TRX)’s zk-SNARKS – Borrowing a Leaf from Zcash (ZEC)

The latest move by the Tron (TRX) is commendable. A look at its formulation and journey in the crypto-sphere attests to the fact that the coin is positioned for greatness. The Zero-Knowledge Succinct Non –Interactive Argument of Knowledge (zk-SNARKS) technology is the latest addition that Tron (TRX) awaits in the space.

The underlying technology, which has been in use in Zcash (ZEC), places the coin at advantage, as it looks to become a privacy coin by default. To this end, TRX will be in favorable competition with top privacy-enhanced coins such as Verge (XVG), Monero (XMR) and Zcash (ZEC) and beyond.

Litecoin (LTC) makes the list with Confidential Transaction

Litecoin (LTC) is also looking at enhancing its daily use specialty with privacy of transactions. This is the reason why it is working on the premise of Confidential Transactions (CT). This is coming on the heels of Charlie Lee’s (Founder of Litecoin) disclosure that the coin is not fungible. He pointed out that this is the missing link in Bitcoin (BTC) and Litecoin (LTC). By adding this through CT, the coin will be fully regarded as “money”.

On the other hand, the MimbleWimble protocol will aid in Litecoin (LTC)’s drive to become fungible. The protocol protects transactions by limiting concise and confidential information to the involved parties. For instance, only the transacting parties (sender and receiver) will have insights on the amount that was involved in the transaction.

Anonymity drives Adoptions

There is no gainsaying the fact that the confidentiality of transactions will increase the chances of the LTC and TRX coins. The step is a welcome development because more investors are getting conscious of transactions. In light of this, the steps toward anonymity will fast-track Tron (TRX) and Litecoin (LTC)’s stakes in the crypto-sphere.

Due to this fast growth in a short period of time, there are several enthusiasts that are wondering whether it is possible for the cryptocurrency created …

Bitcoin (BTC), the most popular digital asset in the market, has been growing during the last few weeks. As time passes, it might be more difficult to reach a lower price. Additionally, there are some digital currencies such as Litecoin (LTC) and Binance Coin (BNB) that are growing at very fast rates.

Since reaching a bottom of $23 back in December 2018, Litecoin has increased its price by more than 100%. Due to this fast growth in a short period of time, there are several enthusiasts that are wondering whether it is possible for the cryptocurrency created by Charlie Lee in 2011 to surpass XRP as the third largest digital asset in the market.

According to the SFOX volatility report, Litecoin experienced increased volatility and price increase when privacy features were announced.

“Litecoin volatility spiked when Litecoin Foundation announced it’s exploring the integration of Mimblewimble, a protocol offering privacy and fungibility to blockchains. In March, keep an eye on how privacy news moments impact markets, such as recent revelations over Coinbase’s third-party service provider selling client data.”

Due to the fact that Venezuela is living an economic, political and social crisis, individuals in the country are using virtual currencies, including Litecoin, to move funds, pay for goods and services and receive money from family living abroad.

These things and the upcoming halving that is going to be affecting Litecoin in the future could eventually help the digital asset reach higher levels in the short term. Nevertheless, this might not happen.

Since September 2018, Ripple’s XRP is in a bear trend. Although it seemed that it was able to recover from the bear market, the digital asset fell from $0.6 down to $0.3 in just a few months. Nonetheless, Ripple continues to sign new partnerships with companies around the world to start using different products developed them.

Although Litecoin enthusiasts expect the digital asset to keep growing and eventually surpass XRP, there is still a long way for it to happen. XRP has a market capitalization of $12.99 billion while Litecoin has a market valuation of $3.51 billion. Litecoin would have to increase 270 percent to reach XRP. That means that each LTC should be worth close to $215 before being able to surpass XRP.

However, XRP could drop to $0.085 to reach $3.51 billion market cap, a further drop of 97%, which seems not close to happening.

Mati Greenspan, a senior market analyst at eToro, wrote that the number one real-world usage of Litecoin seems to be a settlement method for crypto traders. In general, LTC is used by people to send funds between crypto exchanges since it is cheaper and faster to do it with Bitcoin. He then mentioned that with the upcoming halving event, it is likely for it to outperform the crypto market.

Litecoin is expected to be halving as soon as on August 7, 2019. The rewards that Litecoin miners will receive will drop from 25 down to 12.5 coins. This will be reducing Litecoin’s inflation rate per annum to 4.26% compared to 9.02% now. If there is a reduced supply issuance, with higher demand in the market for this digital asset, the price could start to move upwards in a faster way.

Litecoin is currently being traded around $57.55 and it has a market cap of $3.51 billion.